Bessette/Pitney’s AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: DELIBERATION, DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP reviews the idea of "deliberative democracy." Building on the book, this blog offers insights, analysis, and facts about recent events.

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Saturday, November 23, 2013

Souring Views of Obamacare

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds the public’s views souring on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in November, with about half having an unfavorable view of the law and a third having a favorable view, a gap that was seen only once before, during the Republican presidential primaries in 2011. This negative shift in opinion comes amid heavy news coverage of the website problems plaguing the law’s online health insurance exchanges and stories about individuals being dropped from their insurance coverage because their plans don’t meet minimum requirements set by the ACA, stories that were followed closely by more than half the American public this month. The partisan divide on the law continues, but support among Democrats dropped sharply this month after rallying in September and October. Views among women also shifted this month, and for the first time in Kaiser tracking, the share of women with an unfavorable view outnumbered those with a favorable view by a large margin (48 percent versus 32 percent). Visibility of the health insurance exchanges increased among the public overall in November, but reaching the uninsured with information remains a challenge – about four in ten uninsured say they’ve heard nothing at all about the new marketplaces to date, and two-thirds say they still don’t have enough information about the law to know how it will impact them. Still, nearly six in ten of those who currently lack coverage say they plan to get insurance in 2014.